Thanks!...

Just had a "tire kicker" call…....That’s where we go through the whole story about what happened after they shot....how much blood they've found....how far they've tracked it….how many deer has my dog found??.....this and that…....yada yada....and then they say “Ok….well, were gonna keep looking for it and if we don’t find anything we’ll call you in the morning.”

Once people see a good tracking dog work then they never do that anymore. The buck in the last pic will be the last one the hunter ever sends a 4 man search party after. That’s his exact words as we came out of the woods. I suppose it’ll just take time for the idea of using tracking dogs to really become mainstream in hunters' minds. I’m tracking for a lot of repeat clients but I’d still say a good 50% of these tracks are for folks who have never seen a tracking dog work before. As a matter of fact, the last three finds had never used a dog.

The .243 arse shot just called back and wants to give it a try. Headed out to see what we can do.....48 hrs after the shot.

To be continued......

Well….good news and bad news.....

The bad news is that we didn’t recover the buck. I believe the hunter buried a .243 bullet off into one of his hind quarters and he’ll probably die a slow death that will take days.. The bullet could have possibly gotten into the back of the guts which would just about for sure kill it. That’s an awful shot to take with that caliber of gun. Not the best shot in the world to take with any gun but a higher caliber with a bigger bullet would have probably broke him down a lot more or penetrated deeper into the body cavity.

The good news is that Otis was still able to track it after 48 hrs. That gives me a lot more confidence now on these 24 hrs old tracks. Otis picked up on the scent where the deer swam across a little slough and took the track down the banks of the River for over 1000 yards before we finally ran out of property to track on. We found several more spots of blood but never any beds. Total this deer had run over a mile between where they had already tracked him and where we took the track. When I say we were tracking on the banks of the River….I literally mean right down the bank.



Oddly enough, we did actually find a dead deer while searching. This doe was laying right on the waters edge with no signs of being shot. Not sure what happened to her. She wasn't even that stiff when we found her. Had to have just recently died.

Great stories CNC.

Don’t believe it has ever crossed my mind to shoot one in the butt?

Thanks!

Call just came in for tomorrow morning……..

The hunter I spoke with said his wife had shot a good buck this morning. She shot it in the point of the shoulder at 40 yards with a .243…..They tried to track it a little after the shot but ran out of blood. They came back in a little after lunch with a search party and finally picked back up on blood. At 1:00 they jumped the buck out of its bed about 400 yards from the hit site. They said the bed had decent blood in it but the buck still looked pretty lively. We’re gonna give him overnight and hope he’s dead by tomorrow morning. Not sure what we’re dealing with on this one.

Does anyone know anything about the Winchester .243 Extreme Point??? Isn’t that just some form of a fragmenting ballistic tip?? I’m wondering if the bullet maybe exploded on the deer’s shoulder and fragmented. The guy said his wife was usually a good shot and it was only 40 yards away.

https://www.midwayusa.com/product/290015...int-polymer-tip

Been reading and watched a couple videos on this particular bullet and it’s not supposed to be a fragmenting tip…..that’s not to say it couldn’t have happened though.

I’m kind of wondering if maybe she shot it a little too far forward and/or low in the brisket…. just like the find from yesterday. It sounded like they found a fair amount of blood and they even reported seeing a couple spots of “chunky” blood. A lot of folks think that means you’ve hit lungs or something but I believe that most of the time what folks are seeing is where the blood was trying to clot but got dislodged or blown out of the wound. The chunk is a blood clot. We’ll hopefully find out tomorrow what we’re dealing with. I don't like the fact that they said the deer was "still lively" that many hours after the shot. Maybe he's hurt more than we know though.

You will find it still alive, be ready to shoot. Hopefully it will have been long enough and the deer has died though.

Probably hit shoulder and came apart. Saw a deer hit like this with a 30-06 BT at about 50yds. Tracked deer for 300yds before we saw it laying on a hillside looking at us. Father and son both shot it again.

I agree……I think there’s a really good chance that this one will still be alive if we catch up to him. I'm hoping he just ran another 300-500 yards and bedded back down….but they said they looked some more for 100 yards farther after they jumped him so they may have pushed him on out a good ways. He’ll eventually bed back up somewhere. Hopefully the yotes won’t cross that blood trail tonight and get in behind him.

Well….we caught up with him about 800 yards past where they jumped him but he was still good and alive. I let the dogs push him on for another 500 yards or so just to make sure but he wasn’t slowing down. The deer was quartered away from the hunter facing to her right when she shot. She was aiming at the shoulder so my best guess is that she jerked her trigger a little and just clipped him in the front of the shoulder/brisket. He had stopped a couple times after the initial shot and bled two baseball sized spots of dark blood but there wasn’t much more than that. I feel like he’ll live and be fine.

as well to loprofile for the reference.

I was so focused on finding the deer when I pulled up this morning that it just didn’t cross my mind to snap a pic for the story….but when I pulled up the hunters said….”Hey, look what we found while searching yesterday!”

They pulled out a buck skull out of the back of their truck and handed it to me that was a dang sho nuff good ‘un. He wasn’t but about 15 inches wide and didn’t have any freaky long points….. but he was HEEEAVY and had 12 typical points with several more points coming out of the main beam between the other points. I didn’t count it up but it probably had 15-16 “for real” points with mass all the way out the beams that you can wrap your hand around. Imagine a picture of that inserted below…..

Jesse sent it to me, was a stud. Hate y’all didn’t find hers

We did find it…….it just wasn’t dead.

How many points did that buck skull actually have? I just held it for a second and then laid it back down in the back of the truck. I'm just guessing in my story.

You were pretty spot on

Call just came in…..Buck was shot yesterday afternoon. Sounds a lot like a gut hit but the details are a little sketchy. They say they have good blood and gut matter but lost the trail after 150 yards. I would say this sounds very promising but you just never know.

To be continued this afternoon…….

Got him.... Prettiest buck of the season so far. Story and pics to come later.....